Field
The present invention relates to the field of client services. More particularly, the present invention relates to assessing and managing requests for clients.
Description of the Related Art
Consumers, businesses, and other persons who receive products and services from business and government entities often rely on interaction with customer service representatives to carry out transactions or to resolve problems with a product or service. Companies and agencies may that provide such services may need to handle large numbers of client contacts on a daily basis. In many cases, a company or agency sets up a contact center (such as a call center) with a group of agents (for example, customer service representatives) to handle the client contacts. A contact center at one facility may serve all of the clients for a particular state or region, or even worldwide.
Due to the variety and complexity of matters being handled in the contacts, issues handled by a contact center may not be resolved in an efficient manner. For example, in any given case, the actions of one agent may be carried out in a manner that is duplicative or in conflict with those of another agent. In addition, some cases may not be resolved in a timely manner due to agent inefficiencies (for example, performing unnecessary actions) or miscommunication between a customer and an agent, or between agents.
In some cases, responding to a request for a particular service, product, or benefit is a complex process that takes time and involves many steps and interactions (such as, for example, applying for a government benefit.) The amount of resources (including computing, network, and/or staff) needed to handle the load may be difficult to predict and plan for. Moreover, defects may occur in processing that prevent successful fulfillment of a request. For example, a request may become stalled or be lost from a processing queue. In addition, in cases where a large number of processes is carried out by multiple computer systems, over multiple channels of communication (for example, voice, web chat, and text), identifying and correcting defects, redundancies, stuck conditions, and inefficiencies in computer-implemented processes may be difficult or impossible to do in a timely manner.